


the best is yet to come

by seaqueen



Series: 2018 Stanley Cup Champions Collection [6]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, that second round hug you know the one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 05:11:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15599028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaqueen/pseuds/seaqueen
Summary: And then there’s nothing between him and Nicke, and he’s never seen the blond smiling quite so big and uninhibited. It takes years off his face - the pure joy radiating out of him. He’s waiting there like he’s always there with Alex; he’shereand he’s broken right now but he’ll be back because nothing stops Nicklas Backstrom. He’s here and he’s grinning and it’s been eleven years but they’ve done it and Alex knows, heknows, deep in the part of himself where his soul lives, that this is their year.





	the best is yet to come

**Author's Note:**

> The HugTM has been all over my dash lately and every time i see it i couldn't help but think _but what if alex just. kissed him. right there._ and well here we are.

The world lights up - buzzer singing across the ice as the crescendoing roar of the crowd and of his team builds with every flying step they take across the ice. Zhenya goes sliding in his celebration as the team floods from the bench behind them; and for a minute all Alex can do is throw his head back and _scream_. Everything narrows down to this moment. Every last breath, every beat of his heart; all of it and every moment through the years of pain has led here to this time and this place.

Alex skates across the ice in a dream.

The team thunders into one another screaming, a great pile of bodies too entangled to differentiate; not that any of them would want to. They won as a team. Every person as important as the next no matter what scoresheets say - a team everyone wrote off and discredited, a team that was told they didn't have championship caliber. Didn't have the skill or the talent. In the end, true or not, it hadn't mattered. Because they'd done it together and they had come together to find who they were as one single unit, and that was how they won.

He collides with the nearest white jersey, and he's screaming before he even knows who it is, and Jakub is at the top of his lungs in pure, unrelenting joy that echoes along every fiber and nerve ending in Alex's body - he feels alight from the inside out as if he could combust with it all.

They’re out of the second round and headed to the conference finals, and they beat the Penguins to do it. None of it feels quite real yet but every step feels like flying and the weight of a decade of missed expectations and heartbreak slides off his shoulders in that heartbeat; and Alex feels like he hasn’t stood quite so straight in years. He turns and lifts his gaze up to the press box as if he can see it from here - looks for the one person who deserves to be on the ice for this and to feel their joy more than anyone else, but he can’t see Nicke at this distance.

It’s the damper on an otherwise uncapped celebration of relief and happiness. Nicke should be here. If Alex is the heart then Nicke’s the soul of their team and he’s been here for every hard fought step and heartbreaking loss along the way since they were rookies.

But there are interviews to give and reporters to placate before he can see and celebrate with his team. They ask him how it feels to finally make it out of the second round, how it feels to vanquish their demons, and how it feels to defy expectation and Alex wants to laugh - they’re only halfway there. No one believes them when they say this is their year. None of them are ready to let this chance go by.

He’s the last one down the tunnel and he can hear the celebration long before he gets there, and Alex feels far too big for his skin. As if everything he’s feeling and every moment cannot be contained, liable to explode outwards at any given moment because he knows it, in his bones, that if they can do this they can do anything. There are coaches and staff, cameras and microphones as he charges down the tunnel and explodes into the locker room howling, and Alex could climb mountains and scale canyons and cross the sea. He could ford rivers and brave hurricanes and blizzards and there is nothing that stands in his way.

He turns the last corner and the locker room explodes in noise and life.

And then there’s nothing between him and Nicke, and he’s never seen the blond smiling quite so big and uninhibited. It takes years off his face - the pure joy radiating out of him. He’s waiting there like he’s always there with Alex; he’s _here_ and he’s broken right now but he’ll be back because nothing stops Nicklas Backstrom. He’s _here_ and he’s grinning and it’s been eleven years but they’ve done it and Alex knows, he _knows_ , deep in the part of himself where his soul lives, that this is their year.

That it doesn’t all stop with this victory but that there’ll be two more just like it. Eight more wins and he’ll put his hands on that hallowed silver Cup and right alongside him will be the man waiting for him on the other side of the room smiling at Alex like he’s never quite been so happy in his life.

Alex doesn’t think, every higher brain function fled from his mind. He’s moving as if in a dream now, drawn like iron to a lodestone as his entire world narrows down the man standing at his stall. Drops his helmet as he goes and closes the distance between them.

And then, in front of god and Barry Trotz, Alex takes Nicke’s face between both his hands and kisses him.

He tastes like Gatorade and stale nachos snuck from the concession stand. He’s got his good hand tangled in the front of Alex’s jersey - and he’s kissing him _back_.

It was never the right time. At least, that’s what Alex had always told himself. Never the right time, never the right moment - there was always some reason why he shouldn’t. He’s always been a little sure that Nicke feels the same way about him, that there was always a vague sense of _waiting_ in the background of their friendship; but it hadn’t mattered. What they were had never been any less important because of it. Being Nicke’s friend has never meant _less_ because he loves him.

It was just one of those things they never talked about. Hadn’t needed to talk about.

But when Alex draws away, hands still framing Nicke’s face, Nicke is smiling softly. The locker room is quieted to a dull roar around them but they’ve all ceased to exist in this moment when all he knows in this entire world is Nicke.

“Eight more,” Is all he says, and, god, Alex loves him.

_X_

It’s less than an hour back to Washington from Pittsburgh, and it passes in a daze. No one says anything to either of them about it - though he gets more than a few very curious looks. Nicke seems content not to mention it either.

But he’d kissed Alex _back_.

When they land at Dulles everyone separates to their own cars and wives and girlfriends, the high of winning giving way to exhaustion. Alex should be tired. Should be ready to drop where he stands but he finds that he can’t yet, still running too hot and on edge, as if the adrenaline hasn't quite left his system yet.

They won, they're going to the conference finals and it feels like this is it this is their moment and after all these years they're going to do it - and all Alex can think about is how Nicke had curved against him as if he was always meant to be there. When he looks, the Swede has already disappeared inside his car. Alex tries not to feel disappointed by that.

But when he gets on the road and heads towards McLean, Nicke’s Range Rover silently drifts out of the lot behind him and stays to follow him home. He follows Alex through the gate and parks in the driveway, and when Alex comes in through the garage it's to find Nicke already waiting in the kitchen poking through Alex's fridge after letting himself in with his key like he belongs here.

Alex's heart expands.

Nicke turns around with a container of leftover pasta in his hands at the sound of Alex’s footsteps, and adds it to the collection of containers already on the counter. There’s a gentle smile on his face - one that’s reserved solely for Alex and the Russian is crossing the room before he has a chance to think about it. Nicke’s in his arms in the span of a heartbeat, laughing as he looks up at him. It lights up his entire face and Alex has never seen him look so happy in all the years they’ve known each other.

He knows how he feels. For the first time in a long time, there are no expectations waiting for them. They’re beyond what anyone outside their team had thought they could accomplish that’s freeing in its own way. And Nicke might not have been on the ice at the sound of the final buzzer, or been in the pile up as they screamed in jubilation at the the inexorable swing of fate as it turned their way; but he’s the center of it all the same. The back upon which the Washington Capitals were built, standing just out of frame the way he likes.

And now he’s right here in Alex’s kitchen still wearing half his suit and in Alex’s arms as he looks up at him with green eyes that see too well.

He doesn’t know why he ever worried. Nicke has always seen him best of all, through all of the bluster and entropy that swirls around Alex to know the heart of him. They’ve been on the same wavelength their entire careers and it only makes sense that this is no different - that Nicke can read the play before anyone else and make the right move without blinking at all, only waiting for everyone else to catch up. Nicke kisses him first this time, dragging Alex down by his undone tie; and it’s filthy as he swallows the moan it draws from Alex. They break apart when oxygen grows scarce, and Nicke gives him a gentle push towards the food.

They move around each other reheating leftovers and all but inhaling Gatorade until they both have heaping plates in front of them sitting at the kitchen island, and Alex hooks Nicke’s ankle with his own to the Swede’s amusement as he lets him do it. They talk about everything and nothing - about the Lightning and Bruins series, about Andre’s latest shenanigans, about their friends babies and weddings and lives. They don’t talk about them. They’ll talk about it tomorrow in the light of day when time hasn’t slowed and the rest of the world ceased to exist, when the universe hasn’t narrowed down to this place and this moment when everything has gone soft at the edges like an old film.

Nicke leads this time. Draws Alex upstairs with him and then peels him out of his suit until they’re both left in nothing but their underwear, and then as they fall into bed together and he allows Alex to arrange him to his satisfaction tucked against his chest, Nicke looks at him and smiles his private smile again.

“It was you, Alex. It was always going to be you.”


End file.
